Well, I voted

I’m lucky, my polling station is the primary school over the road, on the short walk I’d make anyway to pick up my paper in the morning, so it’s all done and dusted in a few minutes, first thing. Just a steady trickle of voters at that time, no party tellers outside (though I noticed a stern list of instructions as to what they may and particularly may not do), and the duty police officer was taking her ease in the sunshine at the children’s picnic table.

We haven't exacatly been deluged with electioneering on the ground, in this safe Labour seat. These days, much of the campaigning relies on anything but leaflets and door-knocking in the traditional way - neither of those is easy in entry-phoned blocks like this anyway, except in seats taht one or another party wants to target.

 I believe candidates still get one free delivery by the mail - IF they have the people and/or technology to do the addressing and organising of leaflets. I've had one piece of paper from the Tories, most of it showing their young candidate engaged in all the issues a borough councillor would be dealing with, a little bit denouncing Labour, and not much mentioning the word "Conservative"; and two from Labour, one a generic national leaflet urging "Change", and at the last minute one from the local MP, listing all the things she campaigns on. But her interest seems to be student union style opinionating about her pet causes, and there is discontent within the local party organisation, with accusations of letting her staff isolate her even from her party's own local councillors. But somehow moves to deselect her ran into the long grass when the election was called ​​​​​and the national party HQ backed her (when she wasn't that different from others they have squeezed out), and she's sitting on an unassailable majority.

I've also managed to avoid the shouty debates and discussion programmes on TV. I'm quite happy to get all that from the newspaper the next day, and fully intend to do the same for the results tonight.

So here we are. A snap election campaign that turns out to be as big a mistake for the government as the one in France. It hasn't really shifted the opinion polls much (I see one last minute poll is suggesting that 16 - SIXTEEN! - cabinet ministers might lose their seats), it started with the hapless optics of a drenching in the rain, and ended in the bizarrely desperate:

From this:

to this: